Welcome back to our Travel Training series where we are diving into some ways we can incorporate travel training into our life skills curriculum in the classroom or at home! 

In Part 1 we took some time to define travel training and in Part 2 we took a closer look at how to teach it. 

Today we are considering some travel training best practices, something we should consider with any skill we teach but one that is especially important for lessons that involve engaging with transit where something going wrong can have a major impact on a person’s routine. Yet practicing for certain types of travel can entail going out in the real world, perhaps even on one’s own, and whatever risk that might entail. 

How can we meet a need that is important to address for many students while still being mindful of all that comes with that process? Let’s consider a few best practices to find out!

If a student feels they can benefit from lessons on how to navigate a particular transportation setting, there is a reasonable likelihood that throwing them directly into a real world situation without laying any groundwork is not a great way to set them up for success. 

While not every student will require the same amount of preparation, building it into any curriculum focused on navigating transportation settings is a helpful best practice to limit the risk of potential issues should you choose to practice in a real-world setting at a later time.

Whether in the real world or a school setting, one crucial component of practicing skills related to accessing transportation is to create spaces where students feel safe to do their best and that if they make a mistake everything will be OK. 

While this type of framework can be easier to control in school it can be considerably more difficult depending on which type of transit you intend to use! 

Whereas creating that sense of safety in school might include reminders to students that making mistakes is OK (as it should in the real world too!), it might require added logistical effort for you to be able to ensure that the public space you are in is still a safe environment where mistakes are OK. 

Doing so might require using tools like establishing a backup plan or emergency contact and almost certainly involves accompanying students on their trips until they are well-practiced and ready to travel on their own.

Navigating transit can be hard enough when everything goes according to plan, and it gets that much harder when something goes wrong! 

One best practice for navigating the reality that things do go wrong sometimes is to establish different anchor points for a student to tether to when things feel out of control. 

A classic example of an anchor point is an emergency contact. When in doubt we always know to call that particular person who will drop everything and come help or at least talk us through it. 

But an anchor point can also include a plan, a binder of information or contingency plans, or a whole list of people to call in case the first emergency contact isn’t available. 

While we can never control for all of the uncertainty associated with travel, we can limit the ways that uncertainty can drive our anxiety by having a sense of reliable options.

Finally and most crucially, two important goals we need to consider at the same time are the needs our students might have around transportation in the future and their comfort level with the ways they practice certain transportation skills now. 

Some students might feel ready for a real world setting very quickly and be waiting on you to agree. But what about students who don’t feel comfortable with it, even though they’ve done a lot of preparation? Should we push them to try? Will they be successful once they get a chance to experience it? 

The bottom line best practice in this situation is that it’s great to offer a student the opportunity if it is available, but that we should not push students who are not ready to take that step. 

Rather than trying to force a particular step, consider what might be holding the student back from feeling confident on their own terms and if there is a new activity that might help to address that need. 

At the end of the day regardless of our needs, we need to prepare on our own terms, and we need to listen to our students as they find a pace that is right for them.

We hope these best practices have offered some guideposts for implementing a wide variety of travel training practices across a wide variety of needs. 

Regardless of a student’s needs, goals, and current skill level, we can take the time to ensure they feel safe and can navigate this space on their own terms to whatever extent that is realistically possible. 

If you’d like to share your own personal best practices for travel training then we would love to hear from you! Just drop us a line at hello@autismgrownup.com and we will be wrapping up our series next week with a look at some educational resources.